Behind the Aegis
Behind the Aegis's JournalSynagogue, garages spray-painted with racial slurs in West Rogers Park
A badly drawn Star of David and the words “F – - – U!” were among the scribblings residents awoke to Sunday morning on synagogues, garages and other buildings in a largely Jewish area of West Rogers Park.
“It’s outrageous, It’s very sad,” said one resident, as she saw the words Monday sprayed in black paint on the back side of the tiny synagogue in the 2900 block of West Touhy she’s attended for two-plus decades.
In all, a dozen or more buildings appeared to have been hit with the racial slurs and other profanity.
About 6:40 a.m. Sunday, police responded to the store-front synagogue. Officers later got word of similar incidents in the 2800 block of West Estes and the 5700 and 5800 blocks of North Talman. Police labeled the incidents as criminal damage to property. There had been no arrests as of Monday evening.
Anti-Semitic graffiti was found spray-painted on garages and a small synagogue in West Rogers Park on Sunday. | Al Podgorski / Sun-Times
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The Darkness Is Real. So Is The Light.
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But this year, let's own up to the fact that the darkness is real.
• The 148 victims of the Taliban terror attack on a school in Peshawar, Pakistan -- a grim, gory testimonial to the fact that religious freedom is, for too many, still a fiction.
• The racial and class divisions in this country. We might imagine that race relations have moved forward, and in some ways, we would be right. But until African-American parents no longer have to have "The Talk" with their teenaged sons, we are not free. No way.
• The grim and horrific revelations about our country's implicit endorsement of torture. And why aren't there more religious voices screaming about this? Isn't this a theological issue -- or do we no longer believe in that hoary concept of "the image of God?"
• The growth of anti-Semitism. And not even, just, international anti-Semitism. This is not just about Europe. This is about what is happening on college campuses in this country. When a mother of a soon-to-be college freshman asks me, in all candor, whether she should have her own version of "The Talk" with her son, and tell him to take off his kippah, you know that we have a problem.
And yes, there is some light as well. American Jewish prisoner Alan Gross has been released from his long incarceration in Cuba -- making the theme of freedom even that much more powerful.
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May your Festival of Light -- however you choose to spell it -- be filled with precisely that -- the light of moral courage.
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